The International Cannabis Business Conference isn’t the largest or flashiest marijuana-minded event on the calendar, but it is among the most respected.

What started as the Oregon Marijuana Business Conference in 2013 is now a larger, more inclusive annual gathering held in San Francisco each winter. The 2016 edition will take over the Hyatt Regency in the Embarcadero on Feb. 13-14 with speakers Tommy Chong, former U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, U.S. Congressmen Dana Rohrabacher and Earl Blumenauer, Oaksterdam University executive chancellor Dale Sky Jones and others. 

Australian company International Goldfields will acquire an 85% interest in Uruguayan biosciences company Jardin de Invierno SA, trading as WinterGarden Biosciences.

WinterGarden is an emerging agriculture bioscience and biotechnology company based in Uruguay, aiming to become one of the first companies in the world to legally harvest and produce non-synthetic cannabis products for the mass-market.

International Goldfields will issue $8,000,000 in shares to WinterGarden, or 51% of the issued capital post completion of the transaction and associated capital raising, whichever is greater.

WinterGarden will also be issued options in International Goldfields representing 10% of the issued capital.

First a disclaimer: I believe the Greens are a progressive force in Australian politics.

Which makes me shocked and saddened to learn that the Greens supported the Road Transport Drug Testing Bill that gave birth to saliva testing for cannabis when it was introduced in NSW Parliament in 2006.

This bill was dodgy from the start.

Labor’s Eric Roozendaal, Minister for Roads who introduced the bill, is quoted in Hansard (see below): ‘There will be no need for police to prove that a person’s driving was impaired. It need only be proved that the drug was present in the person’s sample.’

Eric is clear: he’s not testing for driver impairment, which is what he should be as minister for roads to make the roads safe; he’s just testing for the presence of the drug.

Children living in the state of Victoria will be the first Australians to trial a synthetic medical cannabis treatment for uncontrollable epilepsy, according to the Herald Sun.

The clinical trial will cost $150,000 and is the first of its kind in Australia, with other states to possibly announce similar initiatives in the near future. It is hoped that if the trial is successful, it could pave the way for medical cannabis to become widely used as part of treatments for a variety of ailments and illnesses, in addition to epilepsy.

Victoria is to become the first state in Australia to legalise cannabis for medical use.

Dozens of Victorian children with severe epilepsy will soon be able to test a cannabis-based drug in the hope it will treat their seizures.

The Austin Hospital in Melbourne is recruiting 60 children with intractable epilepsy to participate in a trial of cannabidiol (CBD) produced by an American pharmaceutical company called Insys Therapeutics Inc.

The drug is made from a synthetic version of CBD, a therapeutic compound found in the cannabis plant. The drug does not include tetrahydrocannabinol or THC - the psycho-active component of cannabis that gets people "stoned".  

Nicholas Johnson, 14, has severe epilepsy. Photo: Tessa Young

New research published today in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine confirms what many of us have suspected for some time: If you smoke a lot of weed — like a lot of it — it can potentially do permanent damage to your short-term memory.

Professor Reto Auer of the University of Lausanne led a team of researchers who examined data on the marijuana habits of nearly 3,400 Americans over a 25-year period. At the end of the study period, the subjects took a battery of tests designed to assess cognitive abilities — memory, focus, ability to make quick decisions, etc.

How do you warn people about the potentially serious risks of a recreational drug that many users think is harmless? This is the challenge now facing health officials hoping to inform and warn the public about an increasingly legal recreational drug.

A new study indicates lifetime use of marijuana is linked to poorer verbal memory at middle age, and its authors want to spread the word.

With various countries and American states on the path to the legalisation of marijuana – both medical and not – questions surrounding its effects on our health are as relevant as ever. Some debate its potential medicinal benefits and its low risks in terms of overdosing make it a ‘safe drug’ that should be legally accessible. On the other hand, some worry about the message of allowing drug use and the health dangers we may not be aware of yet. But the issue of legalisation is complex and must take many more factors into consideration.

If you need an economic argument for legalising marijuana in Australia, here it is: millions of tax dollars.

The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) has released an estimate of how much the government could raise if a 10% goods and services tax (GST) was hypothetically placed on legalised household consumption of marijuana, and after federal law enforcement stopped going after marijuana related-crime.

Is the legalisation of marijuana in Australia a pipe dream? Maybe not, if the government takes the Parliamentary Budget Office’s latest estimates under consideration. According to a new report from the PBO, GST on marijuana sales could bring in over $300 per year in revenue — at least to start with.